About the people, politics and beliefs leading us down the road to pandemonium

political convention

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Paul Ryan Comes Around and Goes AroundPaul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget
Committee, has released his latest plan to balance the federal budget and it’s
nearly identical to the one submitted in 2011. You might say that it's a case
of deja vu all
over again. You might say that, but you'd be wrong. This level of redundancy is
either blatant cussedness or dimentia. You pick.

Once again, Ryan and the
Republicans propose to dismantle Medicare and diminish other popular government
safety net programs. One of their main ideas is to convert Medicare to a
voucher system where seniors get a fixed amount, say $6,000, which they can use
when negotiating for health care coverage with an insurance company. That's it.
If the policy they can buy with their voucher isn't adequate to cover essential
testing and treatment, tough luck.

Ryan believes that by forcing Medicare recipients into the private insurance market the government will save billions in healthcare costs and thereby balance the federal budget within 10 years. This approach to Medicare was rejected by voters in the 2012 with the re-election of President Obama. But that doesn't worry Ryan and his Republican colleagues. Ryan told reporters that he's going to stick to his free market principles no matter how people voted or what the consequences for older people. The following is LaughingStockNation's response to Ryan's first Medicare proposals in May 2011. _____________________________________________________________________Ideology, Medicare and the Ryan PlanMedicare and Social Security are by far the most popular government
programs. To conservatives, however, they continue to be a throbbing irritant
to their ideology, which views the private marketplace, not government, as the
solution to society’s most pressing social problems.

An ideology is a pattern of thinking that turns philosophies and
suppositions into conventional wisdom accepted without question. That means
that on a subject like the future of Medicare, alternative viewpoints are about
as useless to a conservative as skepticism is to a believer in ghosts.

Recently, the most notable example of the conventional wisdom is Republican
congressman Paul Ryan’s deficit-cutting budget proposal. His
idea for Medicare is to turn it into a voucher program where beneficiaries
receive a fixed allocation of money from the government, which they can then
use to pay for medical services through a private insurance company. Though
this plan would significantly cut costs for the government, it would put at
risk many of the elderly whose vouchers were not enough to cover all their
medical expenses. Recipients would have to negotiate with an insurance company
for the lowest price. But full coverage could entail extra premiums to be paid
out of pocket.

This plan is motivated ostensibly by the desire to reduce the cost of
Medicare in the future as the program accommodates an increasing number of old
people. Without such drastic steps, Ryan says, the United States will amass an
insurmountable fiscal deficit in just a few years. One conservative commentator
put the problem succinctly: “If we don’t reform the program, the country will
go broke.”

Here the conventional wisdom speaks, but does it have the answers? And, for
that matter, is it asking the right questions? Of course not. The conservative
ideology forces the issue of Medicare into a marketplace model that is
concerned more with retailing insurance policies than serving the medical needs
of the elderly. It also undermines a highly successful single-payer national healthcare
plan on the pretense of fiscal responsibility.

Here are the questions the ideology doesn’t ask: Why can’t the American
people provide the best and most effective medical care for all of our elderly
citizens? And, how can we accomplish this goal and fund it in a fiscally
responsible way?

The conventional wisdom responds by saying that health care is an individual
responsibility and must be worked out as far as possible in the marketplace. In
addition, Medicare in its present form is a government entitlement and like all
big government programs it’s inefficient and disempowers individuals. The
fiscally responsible thing to do is to severely cut the program to avoid large
government deficits.

In short, the conventional wisdom tells us the Ryan plan will work because,
as everyone knows, 80 year olds are tough customers when it comes to
negotiating with big business for fair prices. It also tells us that caring for
the elderly is less important than holding the line on taxes for the wealthy
and continuing huge government subsidies for big oil and big agriculture.
Unfortunately, fair taxes and reduced subsidies, which would actually cut the
deficit and save Medicare, have been taken off the table. To conservatives,
blinded by their ideology, these options are simply invisible.

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Not So BreitBreaking news (3/12/13):

Breitbart.com, founded by the late political provocateur
and fraud monger Andrew Breitbart, has fallen for a second news hoax in little more than a
month. Breitbart reported as true the made-up story
that Chuck Hagel, newly appointed Secretary of Defense, had accepted money from an organization called Friends of
Hamas.The fake news was floated as a
joke by a reporter and some people took it seriously.Now Breitbart.com, joined by one other far right
website, has distributed a story that says respected New York Times columnist
and Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman has filed for bankruptcy.In his twice-weekly column in the Times, Krugman
often belittles Republicans for their self-serving fixation with the U.S.
budget deficit. Krugman reminds his readers that under President Obama the
deficit has actually declined.Republicans don’t want to believe it.Imagine their glee on hearing that Krugman is a fiscal dead beat who can't even balance the family budget.Turns out the bankruptcy story is fake. But it proved irresistible to an
organization that likes that kind of news best.